Category: Food

When I’m at home, I always take time to prepare my own food, I have always been into cooking and even get the Ivy and Wilde homeware for it, but sometimes life just happen and with work and the kids, we don’t always have time to prepare the food, in those time is when cereal come in the picture. And here I sit, a dejected consumer anthropologist, believing I had mastered the system of flavor-by-color. For years I have coded my candy flavors by color: red, blue, orange- knowing full well that they didn’t deserve their “fruit flavor” designations but that the dyes and chemistry had earned them their own flavor category. Imagine my shock now that it has been revealed that one of my favorite candies – cereal (that’s a whole other blog) has been flavored with LIES!!!!!!

We hate to be the ones to tell you this, but: you’ve been eating a bowl of lies for breakfast … and you probably liked it.

Turns out that the delicious, multicolored O’s that make up Froot Loops don’t actually represent different fruit flavors. Reddit’s Today I Learned series recently unearthed a 1999 article from the Straight Dope, which confirms that “according to Kellogg’s, all of those delectable loops are flavored the same.”

If you fainted into your cereal bowl after reading that, you’re not alone. We’ve all been misled by those tempting lime green, orange, purple, yellow and red loops into thinking they are lime, orange, grape, lemon and cherry and/or strawberry flavored, when, in fact, they all the same flavor. That flavor? “Froot,” which according to Wikipedia, stems from “a blend of fruit flavors.”

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The other night I was out to dinner with a friend who works for Atlanta Parent, having just briefed my waiter on the table's allergy and intolerance restrictions (gluten =wife, Soy= me, MSG= both of us) and joked that they should really do a Top Chef "allergy edition" if they wanted to really be on … Continue reading Food Allergy Critical Mass Creates Commerce

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One of the best ways to get to know a culture is through it’s food. Culture, bey definition, is created by our collectiive reaction to our environments and other macroforces. Our environment also dictates our subsistence. From an anthropological perspective, I see the culinary tradition as one way we pay homage to the natural environment that provides us our food – by honoring it with craft and sharing the appreciation of that craft with others. We elevate food from subsistence to celebration when we create things that delight our senses in addition to filling our bellies.
For example, today we are having my wife’s family over for dinner and decided to go with a Cuban theme (for no reason, save that we wanted an excuse to make Mojitos). So, the first thing I did was find the perfect Sofrito recipe.
I just started following the blog that follows: The High Heel Gourmet. I thought my “food-thropologist” readers and freinds would appreciate some really deep instruction on the perfect Thai staple: a green curry paste.
Enjoy!

I think green curry is the best-known curry in Thai cuisine, although I personally think Massaman and Panang are quite famous on their own, to the point where I don’t even know which one is the close second. But rest assured, if you haven’t reached the point where you’re ready to barf curry before the year end (because I will be giving you recipe after recipe of curries through out the year,) I will give you a medal, accept your “Thai-ness” and appoint you an official “adopted Thai peep.” How is that?

This is the second curry that I learned to make while I was growing up. We made it ourselves because it contains fresh chilies and it doesn’t taste anywhere near as fresh if you buy the pre-made curry paste. My grandmother and my aunt always said I could buy some pre-made curry pastes if I wanted to, but…

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Last night I was on my way to meet a friend after a long day at "the Toronto office", which I have a chance to visit every now and again. He told me where to meet him and said "I'll bring the IKEA Monkey. Wearing our jackets". Since I had been living in a work-enduced … Continue reading IKEA Monkey Madness

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I like the commentary in this blog regarding how the contents of said bloggers refrigerator depict a bleak portrait of decrepit single-life.

I spent much of the early part of my career as a consumer anthropologist working in the consumer package good space, with endless hours engaged in scrutinizing the contents of different household refrigerators: seeking context for grocery purchase-decision-making behavior.

It’s a habit I still hold on I and have used (in addition to pantry and bathroom drawer / medicine cabinet-audits) as a dating litmus-test as well as to gain a better understanding of my friends / family / etc.

You can learn an awful lot about a person’s socioeconomic status, priorities, habits and lifestyle choices based in their “consumable” artifacts: all organic veggies? Condiments-only? Name brand booze but generic food items?

In often catch myself in the checkout line making up stories about the person in front of me in line based on what’s in their belt.

There’re few things as depressing as a bare fridge. It’s the cliché of the single person you always see in movies: a few moldy Chinese takeout containers, a half-empty jar of mayonnaise, a box of baking soda, a six-pack.

But shopping for one is tricky. These days, I do tend to eat at home and to cook more than I did when I had a teenaged roommate. But I have to be careful not to be too ambitious and to fill my kitchen with stuff I’ll never have time to eat. I hate throwing out stuff that survived past its due date: a head of cauliflower, a half-gallon of milk, some cheddar that’s turning into bleu cheese. Still, I’d rather waste food than face an empty larder.

Whenever I do a drawing in indian and sumi ink, I think of Ben Katchor. For years he did comics in the Daily…

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Humans have evolved over time to become allergic to many of the foods we eat. I have allergies to soy and intolerances to lots of yummy fruits and vegetables, for instance. Then there are things like wheat and peanuts and milk that many humans just can stomach. Some attribute this to blood type or environmental … Continue reading A Maladaptive Moo For Modified Milk

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